


shadows

by bam_cassiopeia



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, Force Ghosts, Gen, Psychological Drama, The Dark Side of the Force, The Force, Trauma, Unreliable Narrator, What-If
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-19 03:05:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5951506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bam_cassiopeia/pseuds/bam_cassiopeia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vader lived, and that changes everything and nothing for Ben Solo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. shadows

He is five. Granddad smells and feels like the air before an electrical storm, one of the big ones. He knows, instinctively, he’s not supposed to like a smell associated with danger so much, but to him it feels comforting. The air around his Granddad is heavy with absent heat that makes the world hazier, pushes him down and blankets him. The jagged edges of everything are muted ; his vision dimmer but the darkness forever creeping at the corners in sour-smelling tendrils is washed out in shades of grey.

Granddad feels safe. Tall and larger than life even if he breathes weird under his helmet. The noise is soothing. He has never seen his Granddad take off the helmet, and doesn’t think he ever will. Granddad’s cape is very long, and he knows how to grab it and how to hold himself very rigid so he can be dragged around.

Granddad never says anything, but he never makes him stop either. Never pushes him away.

 

 

 

He is six. Granddad doesn’t talk much, but listens very well. Sometimes he thinks no one else knows how to. Maybe Chewie. Maybe Granddad listens with more than just his ears. Maybe his ears are just better. He listens better than Uncle Luke, who also visit, but much more often, and overwhelms Ben with barbed inquiries, leaving sickly bruises in the fabric of everyday.

 

Luke comes more and more and more. Granddad comes less and less and less.

 

 

 

Ben is seven. Ben is lonely. Ben sees it in the sick colour the sky has taken, feels it in the way the woods around the base tastes like the alderaniaan food they have once a year, the only day in the year he can be sure Mother will be home, beautiful and straight-backed and sad.

Ben opens his window to better drown out the beat of the universe with the discordant noises of life and meditates every morning like his Granddad has shown him. To remind himself he is Ben Solo and he has no existence but that of a shadow. Shadows thrive when there is light and shadows are dark and the darkness cannot find them. Ben thinks of a light source so strong it pushes the darkness back, far from him who can now extend his shadows so much he feels giddy and his concentration breaks. Daylight is warmth on his face, needles of air against his skin, and the insistent noise of the widening rip inside. He is the shadows wrapped tight around his self and he holds Ben together and Ben is. Ben thinks of breakfast.

 

Ben is apathetic and not quite there (if not completely absent, a snide teacher says and dozen others if you listen correctly). His thoughts are razor sharp. He never looks anyone in the eye in fear of losing Ben in the dark of their pupils. Once, when he’d been younger Ben had lost himself in his mother’s eyes. The dense, acid rain of tears had followed him when Mother blinked and he was thrown back in his too small skin.

 

 

 

Ben is eight. Ben stops going to school. After, the tutors change often. They’re nothing memorable, just people. All but Luke and the weight of his gaze. Luke who comes more often than ever.

Ben hasn’t seen Granddad in a long time, and knows better than to ask why. Ben rarely asks questions. He usually already has the answers. He knew how to listen for them.

Granddad never asked questions like Luke, precipice questions designed to make him fall on either side of a bridge reduced to a tightrope. His uncle dissects him, dispassionate, and Ben sits on his clammy hands, guilty of the shadows he wraps himself in to hide from the ever searching dark.

 

 

 

Ben is nine. Uncle Luke tugged and pushed and pulled and Ben finally falls. He falls in a sea of worried faces, faces he doesn’t know, of people long dead. They try to catch him, but they are nothing but the ghosts of shooting stars, and he passes through well-meaning arms, still falling, still unravelling. Light engulfs him, and he is the light, a beacon to the dark and he can’t hide in the shadows anymore. He’s been found and something slimy is anchoring itself to him, in the cracks of his being.

Ben is not scared. Ben is angry. At the creature, at his uncle, at his parents, at everything. It’s absolute, searing, and he has to let it go before it tears him apart.

 

Ben wakes in a room not his. No windows, and he shivers.

Something viscous and foreign moves in the back of his head. Never has anything felt so wrong before. It’s visceral disgust that sends him into convulsion, gagging, clawing hands tearing skin in an effort to dislodge the thing.

The dark laughs, deeply anchored by now, in place of a comforting shadow, settling deep in his marrow, and Ben drowns.

 

_Here is the galaxy, an incalculable number of relationships between living things, little pinpoints of light against the emptiness of space, the force flowing, the background he can’t escape and knows enough to find that one flickering light and the shadows that always surround it –_

_Granddad._

 

Ben wrecked two rooms during his episode. He needs to learn restraint and the proper use of the force. He is to go to Master Skywalker’s Praexum. It’s a chance to be a jedi, and it’ll only be good for him. He will learn so much. He will do great things. He will leave after his tenth birthday, and he is surely bursting with impatience.

Ben doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want to be a jedi, at peace, accepting of everything, empty. He doesn’t want to get used to the slimy voice that’s started talking in dark hisses, following the electrical pathways of his brain. Ben doesn’t want anything to do with the voice.

No.

He wants to crush it, like the slimy thing it is. He wants it dead, ended –

 

Ben thinks of breakfast. Ben goes to breakfast. Ben doesn’t seem to be quite there, but that’s the norm and no one worries. There is no reason to worry.  
Ben will be ten soon, but his thoughts are razor sharp, and he fools everyone.

 

 

 

Ben is ten. Ben is a runaway. Ben has a spaceship and all the stars in the galaxy. Ben flew away on a quest, away from his shackles, all alone on a stolen ship. Ben is in his underwear, lounging in the pilot’s seat. Ben hasn’t washed in two weeks, and his blood thrums with freedom. With anticipation.

Ben is not alone. Granddad is in the co-pilot seat.

He hadn’t been there two seconds ago, and he is strangely transparent. Blueish.  

Granddad tells him how he heard Ben call for him, and now he is here.

Ben listens. Ben asks timidly when he is going to find Grandfather. Where.

 

When the ghost disappears, Ben starts thinking very intently of alderaanian recipes. Ben knows a lot of those. Once, he’d listened very intently to collect as many of those as he could in a datapad. The present had made his mother cry. It’d been broken irreparably during a fight between his parents. Mother had thrown it at Han.

The edges of the shards had been beautiful, iridescent.

 

Alderaanian recipes get boring after a while. Ben is now singing every lullaby he can remember, having run out of inane things to think about.

He has lost track of time since the ghost, and only cursorily glanced at the controls a few times. Ben carefully doesn’t think about his destination.

It can’t be much longer.

 

Ben is still ten years old. It’s a day like any other, but he is free. He found Granddad, and led him where the ghost had said to go. The ghost who was a creature who was the dread in his bones who was the ever present darkness.

The thing is dead now. Crushed.

Ben doesn’t know how to think about that. He’s alone in his head. He doesn’t have to hide from the searching dark. He can just be.

It’s so very strange.

 

Granddad set him free. When he says so, Granddad makes a noise Ben never heard before. He’s curious and feels like he can ask every question he’s ever had, and so he asks what the noise is.

Granddad tells him his voice synthesizer was never planned for tears.

 

 


	2. death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the darkness in Ben's head is dead and gone, but the darkness outside is unrelenting.

He is ten years old and the sound of his grandfather’s tears echoes in his head. He is on a nameless planet in the furthest reaches of the galaxy, a dead thing crumpled in front of him. Ben is free. Free, and it’s the strangest and most unexpected thing that’s ever happened to him.

The dead thing’s black clothing flutters in the wind, torn fabric and sharp slapping noises. Too alive still. Ben kicks at the dead thing, a howl clawing its way out of his throat. The world is white noise, absolving violence, and there’s nothing but blinding, sweet searing rage. Spatters of blood, hot and thick. Hate in his veins – absolute, demanding, petty.

The thing’s head and members loll around in erratic motions, each jerky move a deep stab of satisfaction. He’s panting. Fingers tingling. He feels cleansed, nerves ending oversensitive and raw power boiling his blood. His throat is so raw every breath is painful.

Granddad’s gaze feels heavy on his shoulders.

 

We bury our enemies, Granddad finally says, and so a hole is dug. Granddad makes him use the Force. It takes a long time. When he is done, the smelly dead thing is pushed inside, and then he starts filling the hole. He feels light-headed. They don’t put anything up to mark the grave, but words are said. Ben doesn’t understand them. He throws up, but only when Granddad is done, and just a little.

They leave the nameless planet and the dead thing in its anonymous hole behind. He doesn’t ask to go back home, and Granddad doesn’t ask anything at all. He lets Ben grab onto his cape.

 

When Ben wakes up, they’re on the Triellus Trade Route, direction B-Foroon (primary terrain: mucky). Granddad commed one of his contacts there for intel on a group of slavers, but says the being wasn’t very forthcoming. Wretched hives of scum and villainy are where you find the best tips, and sometimes you have to do your own dirty work.

There’s a blaster in the co-pilot seat. It doesn’t look new. It’s a NN-14 model. Perfect for small hands, Ben heard. There’s a holster and an old-fashioned belt to clip it to. He has to drill a new hole in thick leather to put the belt on, and the weight of the weapon is unusual.

 

Three days later, when he leaves B-Foroon with Granddad and a great need for a new pair of boots, leaving three pirates and a man suspiciously dressed in another hole dug with the Force, he’s already used to the blaster.

 

Granddad teaches him how to actually hit his target in the quiet moments. When the emptiness at the back of Ben’s head itches and itches and itches. When the silence feels oppressive and not freeing. When there is no slaver ship to be boarded, no broken people to bring back to their homes, no ship to clean, no wounds to dress or body to bury, no ongoing pursuit or new lead. When Ben and Granddad are alone, and the silence in Ben’s head gets too much, and he wants nothing but to wrap himself in comfortable shadows.

There’s always something to do, though, and most of the time he keeps the emptiness away by keeping busy. He gives himself challenges and follows the Holonet and starts cooking. He trains and reads everything he finds, from _Reflections on Form III: Unraveling the Contradictions of Power and Protection_ , which he found on the ship and finds as fascinating as unreadable, to _The Slug Named Grendel_ , his go-to story whenever they have kids on board. Slug noises and fight scenes are the most popular bits, after the slug’s death. He always makes sure to draw the agony out.

 

There’s been an incredible growth in the child slave markets, Ben learns. There’s something else, something no one dares say aloud, a monster waiting in the dark, the remnants of an order hidden away in the furthest reaches of deep space. Granddad wouldn’t care but for the rumours of uniformed men and sightings of Star Destroyers. Told in the shadows by jittery people, those stories are ever present on the trail of children leading somewhere beyond the Western Reaches. Granddad isn’t very focused on the search, though. Most of the time they chase after regular slavers, and their passengers know their home address.

Today, it’s a family, and the home is Abbaji. Today, Ben is eleven, and it’s the first time he snuffs out a life. It’s not his first kill, but all the others have been justified. Granddad’s fight is his fight now. He’s very good with his blaster, and he always shoots first. Granddad made sure of it. There are powers moving, and Ben needs to be ready.

Until this moment, the blaster’s been enough.

 

The ship groans around them, shuddering with every hit despite the shielding. Never tells me the odds, Ben says to the brother of the man whose abdomen he has his hands in. He doesn’t need to hear them, really. The liver was shot cleanly through, mid-range. Ben’s meagre medical knowledge doesn’t allow for miracles. The man is obviously in pain.

He knows what is to be done. Granddad is piloting. Ben should be manning the canons already. One dead man won’t satisfy their pursuers.

 

It’s easy to use the force to send to the injured man to a deep sleep, the way Granddad does sometimes when Ben’s nightmares rob him of too much sleep and he becomes cranky. It’s easy to use the force to crush the man’s windpipe.

The pain stops but Ben doesn’t feel any better.

Neither does the brother, who looks at him with fear and disgust.

I spared him agony, Ben thinks, and goes to the canons.

The look stays until they arrive on Abbaji.

 

They leave Abbaji two days later, after Granddad hears someone call Ben a demon child and disapproves. His hand on Ben’s shoulder is comforting – heavy and grounding.

Ben thinks of the sound a body makes when it hits a wall, that sickening crunch. He rarely throws up anymore, though, and this time he didn’t. He’d have liked to stay on Abbaji longer. The jungle was beautiful. He’s co-piloting, because Granddad thinks his education needs to be well-rounded, and soon the thoughts drift away, lost in the humming of engines. They will come back in the dark of the night, as they usually do, when he’s asleep. Defenceless, without even the protective embrace of the shadows he misses every painful second of a life stretched too thin.

 

One week after Abbaji, Granddad starts teaching Ben lightsaber katas, running him into the ground every day. The rest of the time Ben is put to what he knows are yougling exercises, to improve his control. One month to the day, Ben starts making enquiries about medical uses of the force instead of kyber crystals like he really wants to.

Granddad can’t help with that.

 

 


	3. mist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> on a planet forgotten by time, there are ghosts, and an old, dark place that calls to Ben.

Ben is twelve and still distrusting of anomalies. This time it's led him to a swamp planet, nothing with him but a few essential supplies. Here, the smell of decaying leaves and rich earth permeates the air. Ben himself is so dirty he smells as bad as the other lifeforms. He avoids those – their teeth are much sharper than his. He hasn’t been dry in months. Not since he found the swamp, long after he’d gotten Granddad to let him leave aboard an old stolen starhopper. To find the source of the strange itch at the back of his head. He hasn’t yet, but here, what he found is an old place. It’s been patiently waiting for him to step into darkness, to test him and judge him. The air around him feels thick, the Force heavy, pressing down on him. It’s a feeling he likes; a blanket he can wrap himself into – like a shadow. In this primordial place, surrounded by fog and ancient gnarltrees, stagnant waters and the occasional green slant of light, he is out of time. He’s never felt this apart from the universe and yet so near its pulse, like ripples, electric tingles against his skin. Every breath he takes tastes of possibilities and stardust. Every breath he releases is a skin shed, a weight released.

 

 

He would be alone but for the ghosts, unmovable rocks in the flowing fabric of the universe. The human one, with the beard and twinkling eyes, has become Ben’s guide in the shadowy labyrinth. He shows things to Ben and answers his questions and they have long talks. He wears sadness live a too-heavy cloak, and looks at Ben as one would something precious. Sometimes it’s so much it makes Ben feel raw, every hint of affection from the old ghost vinegar in an open wound. He wonders if that’s how the ghost feels, every day. The alien, Ben is glad for his ghostly state. He has no doubt the cranky midget would bludgeon him with his cane if only he could. He never talks to Ben, but he rants to the other ghost, garbled speech mocking at best, accusative at worst. Ben listens to the old crook anyway, for the know-how and the nuggets of wisdom, and because he’s used to people disliking him. Granddad has been teaching him to be conscious of that.

The old ghost teaches Ben not to care. They sit together and he shows him how to breathe more than just air, how to feel everything all at once. The ghost told Ben his lessons have led others astray, that he had no answer to give. That he could only offer tools for survival and try to help Ben find his answers. He’s tried calling the ghost Master as a mark of respect anyway. The old man said Ben already has a master. Ben  doesn’t, really, but he supposes it’s one of those point of view things.

Ben started calling him Grandmaster after that. It makes the old ghost laugh, and the green one bristle, grumbling about Ben’s family line. That’s reason enough to keep doing it. And from a certain point of view, it’s true. Once, as a joke, he called the old ghost Grandma, and though he should, he feels no guilt at the pain it had brought to the ghost. Not when it’d meant days of stories about a spark woman, a Queen and a senator and a pacifist and a fighter. A lost boy and a warrior who took up the mantle of a monster. The old man fleshes out a tragedy in the blank spaces of history, speaking like a holy man on sacred matters. It’s a love story as much as a horror story. It ends with hope. Ben tries to remember every word, every expression and nuance in the ghost’s face and voice. It felt like a gift and a burden both. It hurts, in the way beautiful sad things hurt. Like cutting himself on a shard of broken datapad screen.

 

It becomes a regular thing. Grandmaster gives him an exercise, and distracts him. Ben has to keep on stacking pebbles or levitate sticks or cloak himself in shadows or do fingerstands and listen more than half-way to his mentor. Most times it’s not stories but long rambles on the unrecognized importance of corellian tubers for the galactic economy, or the nature of the force. Long forgotten disputes and the many arts of diplomacy. The old republic’s corrupt senate, or imperial policies. Ben remembers his mother’s passionate speeches, his father’s distrust in politicians. Granddad’s hate for any form of authority. A man in uniform in a nondescript grave on B-Foroon, and his talk of a new order. His uncle’s indifference to everything.

The smaller ghost starts participating in the lessons. He keeps interrupting the talks, using the Force to fling pebbles and moss and mud balls at Ben. The perfect aim is less of a surprise than him doing it at all. The little troll guffaws loudly every time. Ben can’t even retaliate, though he tries anyway. Anything he flings back just passes through the ghost. He gets used to the taste of mud and keeps trying.

 

But sometimes Ben just lies on the spongy ground, head in his hands, feet kicking the air, and asks stories about his family and lets a long dead man’s love wash over him. Even the green ghost doesn’t interrupt those moments. He sits near Ben’s Grandmaster, looking so frail and sad it’s uncomfortable. And sometimes they just walk around, and Ben lets himself run around and climb trees and jump in deep puddles of stagnant water. He’s let the little troll goad him into going barefoot. The soles of his feet have thickened.

 

 

Now, facing the dark place, its call louder than ever, he thinks maybe, just today, he should have put his boots back on. It doesn’t look much like a cave. It’s more of a hollow space, a wide opening between the roots of an ancient gnarltree. Leading under the ground, maybe. Ben can’t see how deep the cave truly is. The entrance is dark, dusty smell of dry bones wafting out of it. The place calls to him. It’s grown more insistent every day. He’s uneasy. He sneezes, wriggle his toes, soft mud reassuring.

Grandmaster is at his side. His eyes aren’t twinkling. They haven’t been since Ben asked to be brought to the cave. But he’s learned much, since his arrival. He cannot stay. Time still flows in the rest of the Galaxy; he’s kept himself apart long enough. One last look at the ghost – now flanked by the green troll, a wide smile, and Ben enters the dark.

It closes around him immediately, and he gropes around for the roots, for a wall, to no avail. Deep breathes, and a step, and another… Staccato heart and shaking hands, he advances blindly. Panic an acrid taste in his mouth. Cold sweat dribbling down his back, but that’s nothing. He can’t see anything. No sound to be heard, the dry smell vanished, like the breeze he felt outside, far away and long ago, like the slippery ground vanishing under his feet.

He falls into obscurity and the darkness eats him, enters the cracks in him, old shadows awakening. He screams, but no sound comes out. He hears nothing but a too-quickly beating heart. Old pains wake and the visions start, a disjointed succession of images and sensations – the gnawing teeth of a world devourer – innumerable voices crying out and then silence – his grandfather, kneeling – a dark room, empty but for a giant throne – a dying whisper, the names of his mother and uncle – a ray of light, a deep chasm and a narrow bridge – a red beam flaring, crackling in the hands of a dark figure – his head burns and so does the galaxy, and he’s still falling, finally screaming.

And then, he crashes onto something. Slams his head hard, bites his tongue.

He’s too dizzy to get up. Everything hurts. The sky is incredibly blue. Strange. Something’s wrong with that. He can’t remember what. Blood in his mouth. Gritty ground under his fingers – sand. Why sand. He was in a cave, he remembers. Tries to stand, sways under the glare of the sun and the pain. He gags, tries to spit out the blood. Nothing to be seen but sand and the too-bright sky.

He’s not in a cave. He’s in a desert, air shimmering with heat, sand dunes taller than him. Isn’t his vision over? If not –

“Hey”

He turns, the lancing pain in his shoulder a bad sign. It’s a girl. She’s wearing tan clothing, threadbare and discoloured. A staff in her right hand, hold familiar, comfortable. Brown hairs. Brown eyes wide with surprise.

“Hrrgl”, he answers. More blood pools behind his teeth.

“Ben? You didn’t tell me – what happened to you?”

He doesn’t know her. How does she – the vision. She’s not – she _itches…_

He backs away, but she’s faster, repeating his name like she’s worried, raising her free hand –

Her hand on his cheek, calluses – light blooming somewhere in the recesses of his brain, growing, searing. Painful and overwhelming. He’s screaming. She’s screaming, a rip in the fabric of the universe.

 

 

Ben comes to himself. He’s in the dark again. He can feel crusted, flaky blood on his face, but he’s just weary, not truly in pain anymore. The taste of blood only a phantom. He rolls from the foetal position he’s in to lay on his back. Breathes deeply the humid smell. Decaying leaves and rotting wood, a hint of rich earth – swamp stink. Dagobah. _Home_. He lets the triumphant, heady feeling of life going on wash over him, his heart settling.

If he closes his eyes, he can still see the light under his eyelids – calling to him, a heartbeat far away, the pulse deep in his being, the insistent tug that’s not _him_. It’s stronger now. Itchier.

It doesn’t hurt. It just feels… needy.

He thinks of smothering it in his shadows before it grows, this thing that’s not him, push it deep where he never looks and poison it and kill it. It only brings back the acrid taste of nausea – half of himself trying to flee the confines of his skin, synapses firing conflicting messages, hands jerking, spikes of panic, and he won’t do it, he will never do it, he will let the light stays, he tries to reassure one of them, he won’t –

 

Ben leaves the cave hours after he entered it. He still feels sick. Feverish. Itchy. The ghosts are waiting, and he sees relief dawn on his Grandmaster’s face. The troll says he thought for sure Ben had died. He’s cackling. Ben doesn’t even care, just let himself fall in the mud. He can hear the ghosts bicker, something about how it’s not the time and could he shut the kriff up, Ben is obviously in shock –

Grandmaster is looking at him, crouched on the ground. He looks awkward. Blueish and insubstantial. And still the phantom feel of a ghost hand hesitantly patting his head is enough to get Ben to cry.

 

The ghosts teach him one last thing, how to build a wall in his head. Ben leaves when the wall is impregnable, full of defences and traps, some of his own imagining. He almost doesn’t feel the itch anymore, behind layers of protection. The day he leaves, the old ghost gifts him with a set of coordinates to a forgotten ice planet. He tells Ben he misses his grandfather. Ben tries to look solemn saying he will pass the message. He thanks the ghost for the lessons. He says he will visit. He doesn’t say, when I’ll have found the itch and smothered it, I’ll come back for more lessons. He doesn’t say, I will come accompanied. He knows it’ll be hard to convince Granddad, but he will try his best.

The green alien just mimes gagging and shakes his cane at him. Ben shan’t miss him. He really won’t. He thanks the crook nonetheless.

Granddad _did_ drill _Par Ontham's Guide to Etiquette_ into him, after all.

 

 


	4. pit-stop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sometimes Ben thinks Maz Kanata inspired the legend of the witch and her gingerbread ship

Ben is thirteen when he lands on Takodana, tired and hungry. His legs are cramped from the time spent in his starhopper’s cockpit and he stumbles a little, knees wobbling. The solid ground feels strange under his feet. Solid. Dry like the atmosphere, and so unlike Dagobah. At least there’s green everywhere around him. The air smells like sap, nothing like the murky swamp stink his clothes still carry. The dryness irritates the inside of his nose. He breathes deeply anyway, ignoring the itch. It feels like he’s going to sneeze at any moment, a sensation just as annoying as the thing that’s taken residence in the back of his brain. He shakes his head, but doesn’t expect the parasite to leave any more than the last hundred times he did that.

Behind the curtain of trees, Maz Kanata’s castle looms ahead, the old building he’s sure was a temple once, long before it became a meeting place for smugglers, travellers and unsavoury people of all kinds.

Granddad loves this place. He says it’s his kind of people that come here. Ben doesn’t see how that works, because Granddad also says it’s a hive of scum of villainy, and no place for a child. He says to be careful of Maz; she’s full of pretty words but she’d swindle anyone, regardless of allegiance. All are welcome, as long as their throats are parched and their pockets full.

But Granddad brought Ben to worse places, and Maz knows more than most. She always has good intel, and she’s given them the route of more than a few slavers’ convoys. Some her own clients, though no one’s stupid enough to point it out.  

Ben could do without her thing with eyes, even if it’s always funny to see her inflict it to someone else. He thinks she’s really a crook – but still, she’s the oldest person he’s ever met, probably ever will, and force user or not, Ben knows she’s seen many things in her life. More things than his own lifespan will allow.

And she always has good food. That’s a plus in Ben’s books. He can cook just fine, and he’s proud of it, but that doesn’t mean he likes it.

 

 

“Ben, you little scamp!,” Maz bellows as he enters the castle, noise washing over him. Maz’s voice is only the most sonorous of many. “Do you have any idea how much you worried your grandfather?”

Ben only shrugs. Granddad always worries, though he’s terrible at showing it.

 He follows the small woman, shoulders hunched under too many curious eyes, only half-listening as Maz comments on how skinny and grimy he is; some food will do him good, she says. He tunes her out after the promise of bantha steak. The thought of meat only reminds him of how hungry he is.

Nothing and no-one stands out as suspicious, but that doesn’t mean much. Everyone looks a bit suspicious here, from two Dowutins in smelly leathers silently observing the room to a red-haired man badly faking inebriation. But no one’s looking at Ben. There’s nothing to feel other than the everyday ugliness of ordinary lifeforms either, and he lets himself relax a bit, finally sitting in a dark corner. A droid comes with a plate and a glass, and leaves too fast for him to say his thanks. He looks down at the huge bantha steak on his plate. He hasn’t eaten meat in months. He might be sick. Maz is still talking – something about baths, now.

“Do you have anything interesting to say?” he interrupts, looking up from his plate. He’ll risk the steak. It smells delicious.

Maz only sighs. “You’re an awful kid,” she tells him. “Where’s the respect you owe your elders?”

“Dunno. Do I owe any respect to a smuggler with a statue of herself in her courtyard?”

“Awful, terrible kid. Why am I even feeding you?”

 “I’m still growing,” he deadpans. “You think I’m too skinny. You’ll throw me out as soon as I’m fed and your conscience assuaged.”

“That I will. Should teach you some respect, spending the night outside with the other wild beasts. Maybe they’ll gobble you up and I’ll be rid of you and your fleas..”

Ben snorts. Takodana isn’t Dagobah, and his only predators here are more likely to be inside than outside. Maz wouldn’t anyway. He knows just how far he can push her, and behind thick glasses, her eyes are twinkling. She thinks he’s funny He starts eating, the taste of tender meat glorious after months of Dagobah stew.

It feels good. Delicious food, a glass of spicy hot cider – only one, Maz said. He’s dry, surrounded by the noise of people living their own lives and too many smells to identify them all. And over it all, Maz’s prattle: the kids from Trigalis are settling well, strange ships have been spotted near Gannaria, but that could be anything, Corellian tubers’ prices are shooting up, the fight for influence between the Hutts and the Niktos grows uglier, three slavers cargo ships were found destroyed, perpetrator unknown, some outrageous shipping laws recently voted by the New Republic’s Senate, and Corellian tubers Ben, they really have never been more expensive –

“Really?,” Ben asks, putting down his fork. Maz is older than dirt. If she says corellian tubers have never been more expensive, it must be true. “It’s that bad?”

Maz sighs. “Don’t you mind the tubers. It’s not important.” It probably is, but Maz doesn’t leave him time to protest. “There’s something else – I have a name for your grandfather.” Her voice drops to a murmur, and he almost doesn’t hear what follows. “The First Order.” She shudders, but it’s not cold at all in the castle.

“The First Order,” he repeats dutifully. He’s never heard that before but – “Don’t they call themselves the Empire still?”

“Don’t you say that name,” Maz says, shuddering again. He’d guessed right. “There’s a storm coming, child. You’d better be with your grandfather when it starts – you’ll be… safe with him, if nothing else.”

He frowns at that. “What nothing else?”

“Look at yourself, scamp. How old are you? Too young to be gallivanting about with your grandfather as only role model. You should be with your parents –“

“I can’t!”

“Liar,” Maz says, and Ben forces himself to unclench his fists. Deep breathes, once, twice, thrice… He doesn’t trust himself to speak and just nods. She’s right. She’s wrong, too – she knows a lot, Maz, but she doesn’t know everything. She’s had time enough to forget many, many things.

“Ben,” she continues, tone low and serious. “Your parents… Your father stopped here, two months ago and –“

It would take Ben three minutes running to reach the door, and odds are someone would stop him. “What did you tell him?”

“The truth. That I didn’t know where you were. But Ben – your uncle came by too, just last week. He felt… a disturbance in the Force.” Maz’s look is grave. “So did I.” Ben’s panic must be clear on his face, because she adds “I don’t want the details, child. I want you to learn how to hide yourself before you’re too noticeable and something finds you… again.”

“I did,” he says. Too late, he doesn’t say. There’s an itch and it’s just _there_ and it’s driving me mad, he doesn’t say. He’s not sure he wants to do about the itch, but he definitely doesn’t want to talk about it. And certainly not with Maz.

“You did?”

Doubt in her voice. _A sad ghost taught me_ , he thinks. Maybe Maz would even believe it. “I did. So. What did you tell my uncle?”

 

 

Maz hadn’t been kidding about the bath. He’d tried to resist, but she’d just called one of her security droids, and Ben had been carried to a small room before being thrown in a tub, still clothed.

She’d chopped off his hair, saying it was a lost cause. What’s left of it is an uneven mess, with no fringe to hide behind. His ears stick out something awful. He’s not talking to Maz anymore. He’s not talking to anyone in this place, ever again.

It’s the third time he comes out of the water, and it’s the third time he’s still not clean enough for Maz’s tastes. At least it’s water, much nicer than a sonic shower, and it’s warm. He’s been compliant – must be why she leaves him alone in the end. Not without reminding him to scrub behind his ears one last time. He bites down on his protestations and says _Yes, Maz_ , looking down.

The door shuts and for a few short moments there’s only silence and the sound of his almost-steady heartbeat. Maz is trying to win time. She wants him to stay here and wait for Grandddad, of course – she must have contacted him already. He hopes it’s Granddad she called, not his parents. Or worse, his uncle. He doesn’t intend to stick around and find out. That’ll teach him to let food and warmth go to his head. That’ll teach him to let his guard down. He shouldn’t have told her he had another pit-stop planned. He shouldn’t even have stopped here.

Granddad won’t let him go to Ilum. But Ben knows he’s ready. He feels the call. At night, he dreams of white unending landscapes under dark starlit skies and silence, transparent stones and colours hidden inside, pulsing impatiently.

He needs to go.

His Dagobah rags were left bunched up in a corner. It takes him three minutes to put them on again, open the window and jump. Two seconds to bite down on the terror of the ground rushing to meet him and remember to use the Force to cushion his landing. An eternity to remember how to breathe.

It’s late, the darkness almost a cloak. He’s lucky, and there’s no one to be seen in the courtyard. He just has to reach his starhopper and then he’ll be gone. Deep breaths, once, twice, thrice, and he’s running.

 

 


	5. ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the depths of Ilum, Ben finds a reflection of himself

Ben is still thirteen years old when coordinates given to him by the ghost of another era bring him in the depths of winter. From orbit, Ilum looks like a polished stone, its massive sun giving the surface a golden sheen. No visible signs of occupation, but at this altitude it’s only to be expected. As he starts his descent the only living things he can feel are the simple minds of asharl panthers and gorgodons, razhaks and snowfeather birds. Hunger. And somewhere, everywhere, a song without sound, born in the crystalline depths of the planet.

 

The real Ilum is almost as white and silent as the one in Ben’s dreams; here there are shades of blue and pale greens trapped in the ice, and a freezing gale blows, the wind howling in his ears. Out of the snow and ice, it sculpts fantastical structures that last a day or hundred years, rising higher, growing bigger, before breaking under their own weight or a too-strong gust of wind. Cracking, rumbling sounds, little more than white noise under the roaring of the wind. The sky isn’t black and starry because it’s still day. And it’s cold too, so cold he feels he’ll never be warm again, so cold he almost wants to turn back. He bundled himself up in what rags he has left, even wrapped some around his head and hands, but it offers little protection. There’s snow in the air, little flakes of white borne by the wind like so many needles. It feels a little like Dagobah; a place out of time, ancient and forgotten. A step outside reality. The atmosphere is thick with raw Force, strong currents pulling and tugging as much as the wind, and if he closes his eyes, he can hear the song. It tells of deep crevasses, fragile, close to breaking ice-sculptures and meat-eaters lying in wait, of a path in the whiteness leading deep, deep underground, where ghosts dwell, where crystals slowly grow in the dark, under the protective crust of the planet. One is his, white still, waiting to be awakened by a touch, calling for him – if he can reach it without losing himself in the whiteness, leaving a small pile of bones to be scrubbed clean by the unforgiving winter.

 

 _It will be dangerous_ , the sad ghost had said on Dagobah. _Long ago, the trial was surviving Ilum as much as it was finding one’s crystal in the caves – and that time has come back. For decades the old paths haven’t been maintained, the protection wards renewed. You’ll have to find your own way. Ilum won’t welcome you._

 _It’ll eat you up and spit you out,_ the smaller ghost had added, cackling.

 

Ben open his eyes. The itch in his head is quiet, a small mercy. Maybe it doesn’t like the cold.

 _You don’t like the cold_ , he thinks at it. There are no words in answer, but a fleeting impression of warmth, of comfort. The thing has never used words; it’s nothing but foreign impressions and feelings. Ben tries to keep it behind walls, but It wails and wails and he can’t bear it. 

But for now the itch is leaving him in peace. Ben starts walking. Fighting against the Force and the wind’s skeletal fingers for every step, like he’s underwater, swimming against the current. His feet sink in the snow again and again and again, the rags bundled around his feet already uncomfortably wet. The cold seeps deep into his bones and that must be what dying feels like, veins turning to ice, the slow loss of sensations. Granddad taught him how to regulate his internal temperature, and the ghosts made him practice in the swampy glades of Dagobah, but he’s not good enough yet, can’t follow the song, ignore the traitorous push and pull of the Force, and warm himself at the same time, and he’s so, so cold.

He’s being an idiot. Ben stops walking, concentrating on the song, what it tells of his immediate surroundings, of the path he has to take... And then he tears himself from it and breathes. Warmth comes back slowly; by the time he feels the tip of his fingers and toes again, he only hears the song from what seems to be a great distance. He doesn’t dare to walk long without its guidance, but for a few minutes…

For a few minutes he can forget the cold and just walk. It’s still slow going, and he’s probably deviating a bit.  He still has to fight against the wind. His feet still sink at every step he takes. The old histories had said Ilum had only been made welcoming after centuries of Jedi work. Ben wonders what kind of work. If the planet is already back to its natural state, or if it it become even more inhospitable. So many questions. So few answers.  

Behind a smooth slab of ice, protected from the wind if not the cold, he calls the song again. He did deviate a bit from the path. Not much. The path is clear again; the only danger ahead a hollow hill. He’ll have to take the long way around it.

It becomes a rhythm – warm himself, walk, pause, listen, repeat. Be careful where you put your feet. Keep away from the ice as much as possible. Cracking sounds can be followed by flying fragments. Be on the lookout for those. Don’t stop more than needed.

 

He’s listening to the song again, so concentrated on the path, the black ice ahead, _danger deep dark_ , he doesn’t feel the asharl until it’s too late. It’s coming fast, and Ben only has time to tear himself away from his trance that the beast upon him. There must be at least another not far; asharl panthers are pack animals. Ben’s hands are too clumsy, too much like blocks of ice, unresponsive again under the wrapped rags. Running isn’t an option. Asharls are fast.

 _I don’t want to fight you_ , he thinks at the beast. _Let us each go our own way_.

The asharl doesn’t care. It’s hungry. Warm meat and blood. That’s what it wants. It jumps.

No time for thoughts.

With the Force, Ben squeezes. The asharl’s cry of pain is cut short. The broken body falls mid-jump with a thud.

The wind still howls and the snow still falls. Ben’s hands still shake, but not from the cold. Wind and snow will bury the asharl soon. The dark stain will disappear. Ben could have used the fur. He does have a knife.

Too much effort. Too much time. He leaves it where it is. 

 

When the second asharl reaches him, Ben doesn’t try speaking to it, and doesn’t leave it time to attack. It makes almost no sound as it falls.

Ben keeps walking.

 

 

The light has started dimming, casting the landscapes in grey shades, when he reaches a high cliff and the entrance to the caves. There was a temple here once, Ben knows. All he sees is rubble. Huge boulders and smaller fragments. Cracks and holes in the cliff, chambers exposed by the wind and its ceaseless work. Ice over it all, grown into strange shapes, battered by the strong winds. People lived here once, in a temple that was said to be a marvel to behold.

But that was centuries ago. No one has lived here since long before the birth of the Empire and Ben is too cold to marvel at dilapidated ruins. He’s too tired to really keep warm, now, and all he wants is some respite from the wind. Some silence.

The way to the caves’ entrance is mostly free of rubble. Ben can feel the remnants of wards infinitely older than him, still keeping the way clear. The way to the mouth of Ilum. _It’ll eat you up and spit you out,_ he remembers. A shudder that has nothing to do with the cold. Too late to turn back. He can feel his crystal calling somewhere ahead.

 

 

It’s dark inside the caves. Tunnels twist and turnThe only light comes from the crystals themselves, diffuse and otherworldly. They grow haphazardly, clustered by dozens in some places, rare in others. Some jut out of the ground. Most are small, but the deeper into the caves, the more frequent it becomes to see crystals half his size or more. Ben is careful not to touch them as he follows the call. He’s not cold anymore; he feels hot and feverish, unable to discern whether the ghosts surrounding him are real or visions or hallucinations. Their words don’t reach him, muffled and distant, as if some sort of wall separates Ben from them. He walks through them. The song is growing louder and louder.

 

 

He’s reached his destination; a crystal pulsing with light within, strongly enough that Ben has to close his eyes again as he approaches it. It’s warm, too. The song reaches a crescendo, but when his hand touches the crystal waiting for him, it dissolves in a cacophony of shrieking sounds.

He sees Granddad throwing an old man in black robes down a shaft and fall to his knees, strange wheezing sounds, laboured breaths distorted by a respirator – Granddad. Dying. Can’t be. Isn’t, because here is Uncle Luke, shouldering the mountain that is Granddad, carrying him away, not letting him go, never – but he will, he will, Ben knows, he can see the long lonely years, running after wrongs to right, tipping the scales, pain-filled day after pain-filled day and no end in sight until suddenly there’s Ben at Granddad’s side. It's everything he never had and the guilt eats him up and now Ben is gone and disappeared and he’s so worried –

Ben blinks. He’s in his father’s skin now, holding his mother’s hand, watching the rain behind her eyes, chest constricting… Blink. Uncle Luke trying to meditate, searching for something, something hidden... Blink. Maz Kanata speaking to a woman holding a baby. Blink. A red-haired man behind a desk. Blink. More people he doesn’t know, faces he’s never seen, a myriad of images, the glimpses shorter and shorter, like flashes of light that leave him blinded – 

Six masked shadows. Rain and lightning. _We’re waiting for you_.

 

He wakes up with red smeared behind his eyelids, slumped against the wall, the itch in his head howling as if in pain. His head hurts. There’s sticky cold blood behind his neck. He feels disconnected somehow, unable to move the heavy mass of his own body, or even raise his eyelids. But the thing at the back of his head is still screeching, refusing to let him sink back into unconsciousness.

Anger grows, and he welcomes it, welcomes the sudden warmth and the burst of raging energy. It’s anger that helps him to push the itch back in the darkest depth where he keeps it. It’s anger that propels him as he crawls towards his crystal, the crystal he can still hear singing – the crystal that cracked when he touched it,  a deep line of fracture marring it now.

His crystal. Cracked. _Crystals are a reflection of their users_ , he remembers. But that was about colors, wasn’t it?

Ben isn’t broken. Rage takes a hold of him and he throws the crystal. It clatters away.

When he finds it again, the fracture is deeper. Stupid. But the crystal is still singing. Still _his_.

Still white. Strange.  

He finds the crystal warm when he takes it, a heady rush of power leaving him unsteady. He still feels disconnected from himself, but it’s different now; he staggers, but he can walk, tightly holding his crystal. Retrace his steps in the dark tunnels, find the entrance with its glittering ice formations.

 

It’s still day outside. Not still. Again. He’s been in the caves.. at least a night. It takes him a few centuries to trace his steps back and find his starhopper again, or a few seconds. He’s not sure. He’s burning, his skin clammy. Everything looks fuzzy. His fingers are clumsy as he climbs inside his ship, as he takes off from Ilum, and Granddad would probably be ashamed of his flying. Ben just wants to leave. Ilum is shrinking behind him, the blue of it disappeared. He wants a warm bath and hot food and a nice bed and for his mother to read him a story, like when he was very young and sick. But his flying is terrible. He’ll never reach home like that, wherever it is in the vast emptiness of space. He flicks a switch and nothing happens. He tries to veer and nothing happens. It’s like the controls are unresponsive. He doesn’t understand. His ship moving on his own. It’s like…

Darkness, suddenly; he looks up. There’s a ship above, the belly of a freighter. He’s moving towards it. How strange.

A tractor beam. He’s caught in a tractor beam.

 

 

 


End file.
